What Can SFA Do? An Explanation of 5 Essential Functions (With Case Studies)

While SFA Offers Many Functions, It Can Be Difficult to Understand What It Actually Does

Sales activities involve a wide variety of tasks. To support and streamline these complex operations, SFA systems are equipped with numerous functions.

Although many features are introduced on SFA tool websites and in brochures, while it may seem like they can be used for many things, users often comment that "there are so many features that it is difficult to understand what can be done and how it can be utilized within our own company."

In such cases, let us focus on the following five functions:

1. Customer Management
2. Opportunity Management
3. Sales Negotiation Management
4. Budget vs. Actual Management
5. Activity Support

SFA functions can generally be classified into the five categories above, with more granular features linked to them. While specific features vary by SFA tool, understanding these basic functions makes the system much easier to grasp.

SFA Function 1: Customer Management

Function Overview

This function manages information on customers (prospects) targeted for sales activities.

In addition to basic information typically found on business cards—such as the contact person's name, company name, address, and phone number—you can view sales-related information per customer, including contact history and the progress of sales negotiations.

This function is frequently used not only by the sales department but also in collaboration with other departments such as marketing and customer support.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

By implementing SFA to centralize customer information, you gain the following benefits:

• Customer information can be shared across the entire team and department.
• Handover of information becomes easier when sales representatives are transferred or resign.
• Risks can be prevented by sharing information about problematic customers, such as those with a history of disputes.

It is crucial to reach a state where "everything you need to know about a customer can be found here."

To improve the accuracy of managed customer data, companies often integrate SFA with business card management tools or corporate databases, or link it with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems that focus on managing existing customer information.

SFA Function 2: Opportunity Management

Function Overview

This function tracks and manages the status of sales opportunities.

Opportunity management visualizes the following for each product, customer, and sales representative:

• Progress within the sales process
• Probability of closing
• Estimated deal value
• Expected closing date

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

By using SFA for opportunity management, management can view opportunities quantitatively as data, making it easier to grasp the status of the entire team.

This allows for the identification of "latest opportunities," "high-probability opportunities," "neglected opportunities," and "reasons for lost deals," enabling:

• Approaching high-potential customers
• Prioritizing opportunities to pursue
• Uncovering buried customer leads

This facilitates efficient direction to sales representatives.

The key to utilizing opportunity management functions is to clarify and standardize the sales process. If implementation proceeds while the sales process remains ambiguous, the SFA may not lead to improved efficiency.

By visualizing the sales process and analyzing the progress of opportunities, you can identify where the bottlenecks in your sales flow are and implement improvements.

SFA Function 3: Sales Negotiation Management

Function Overview

This function tracks and manages the status of sales negotiations.

Negotiation management records information such as the negotiation partner, the sales representative, the content of the discussion, materials used, and the results, allowing you to:

• Track the progress of negotiations
• Share negotiation details
• Analyze negotiation outcomes

By utilizing the negotiation management function, you can analyze "which sales representative is successful in converting negotiations into opportunities" or "under what conditions negotiations are likely to become opportunities," and share these insights across the entire sales department.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

Similar to opportunity management, using SFA allows you to extract data from various perspectives—such as customers, sales representatives, materials, and the day or time of the negotiation—making analysis easier.

Standardizing negotiations that were previously left to top-performing sales staff and sharing that information can help elevate the entire team's performance, while also reducing the risks associated with reliance on specific individuals.

Furthermore, clarifying and standardizing the sales process is also essential for effective negotiation management.

SFA Function 4: Budget and Performance Management

Function Overview

This function manages the budgets and performance of sales departments.

• Sales Forecasts
• Actual Sales Results
• Goal Achievement Rates

By tracking and analyzing these metrics by sales process or sales representative, companies can use the data to improve the entire sales department and support management decision-making.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

Companies that previously relied on intuition or experience for forecasting, budgeting, and goal setting can use SFA to calculate appropriate budgets and numerical targets based on accumulated data.

Furthermore, because achievement rates can be calculated quickly, companies can accelerate the PDCA cycle of their sales activities.

SFA also includes robust reporting features that allow data to be output clearly in graphs and charts, making it an essential tool for streamlining management tasks.

Reports can be created for various periods, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, and filtered by various criteria. However, it is important not to generate reports aimlessly, but rather to determine which reports to use with a clear purpose, such as improving sales efficiency or performance.

SFA Function 5: Activity Support

All the functions introduced above rely on sales representatives correctly entering their daily sales activities as data.

However, in many cases, input is delayed because sales representatives find it troublesome, meaningless, or feel forced by management. One reason for this is that SFA is often perceived as a management-side tool for "sales control."

If the cooperation of field sales staff is not obtained, the utilization of SFA will stall.

This is where the activity support function becomes crucial.

In addition to their daily sales activities, sales representatives must perform the following tasks within the SFA:

• Entering customer data
• Entering sales data such as deals and negotiations
• Managing schedules
• Posting daily reports

Therefore, it is important to utilize activity support functions that reduce the burden on sales representatives to ensure information is entered appropriately.

Key points include:

• User-friendly input screens
• Ease of input from mobile devices such as smartphones
• Comprehensive input support features
• Automatic posting functions

Activity support is a vital function for ensuring that SFA is used as a tool that makes sales representatives feel that "SFA has made my work easier" and "there is a personal benefit," rather than just serving the management side.

Additionally, SFA can manage activities such as the number of appointments, visits, negotiations, and closing rates of sales representatives. By understanding a representative's strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral challenges through data, managers can more easily provide appropriate guidance and training.

Customer Success Stories with SFA

By integrating SFA with the SFA linkage tool uSonar, it is possible to maximize the benefits of implementation.

Case Study: Business Breakthrough, Inc.

Challenges Before Implementing uSonar

• Standardizing fragmented business processes
• Building an integrated system to centralize customer information

Reasons for Choosing uSonar

• Extensive track record of integration with Salesforce
• Unparalleled data quality and volume, covering even branch offices and business sites

Results Achieved

• 120% Increase in New Sales Opportunities
• Doubled Response Rate for Direct Mail
• Cross-departmental Utilization, Including Accounting and General Affairs, Has Become Standard Practice

For more details on this case study, click here.

Case Study: Demae-can Co., Ltd.

Challenges Before Implementing uSonar

• Issues With the Comprehensiveness and Reliability of Store Information Needed for Sales Strategy Development

Reasons for Choosing uSonar

• Ability to Integrate With Salesforce and Utilize It for Promoting DX
• High Reliability of Information With Over 800,000 Restaurant Records Registered

Results Achieved

• Enabled the Development of Precise Sales Strategies, Leading to Efficient Sales Activities
• Reduced Man-hours for Store Information Maintenance and Corrections by 60%, Saving Approximately 17 Million Yen Annually
• Streamlined Back-office Operations Such as Simple Anti-social Force Checks

For more details on this case study, click here.

Summary

The necessary functions, the functions that should be prioritized, and the functions that should be used first vary depending on the company, the sales department's situation, and the sales process.

However, the five functions introduced here are all fundamental and essential for the effective utilization of SFA.

SFA offers many sales support functions, but if you find it difficult to know where to start due to the sheer number of features, why not focus on these five functions?

By correctly understanding what SFA can do, you can work toward improving sales efficiency and business performance using SFA tools.